


if you love me let me go

by alexanger



Series: if you love me: [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: M/M, ghost au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 06:33:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10938969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanger/pseuds/alexanger
Summary: “I’d die without you,” he says to Alexander one night as they lay side by side on Aaron’s bed.“You’ll die regardless,” says Alexander. “But I’ll be with you to bring you home. We’ll go together. Nothing to be scared of.”





	if you love me let me go

We all die alone. In our final moments, when we shudder to a halt, it doesn’t matter how many hands we have to grasp or who is beside us whispering comforting words. We are alone, locked inside the failing of our body.

Aaron Burr remembers this when Alexander asks him, “Burr, what did you do to me? Why won’t you tell me?”

 

* * *

 

_Dear Alexander:_

_I dreamed last night of the war. I so rarely dream of those times but sometimes they come creeping back._

_I dreamed of the gunshots and nothing else. Just the sound of the guns. I fear I’ll never escape the sound of the guns. Especially considering what you and I_

“What did you do to me, Aaron?” Alexander asks. He’s perched on the arm of Aaron’s chair, one hand idly playing with the ruffled cuff of Aaron’s shirt.  “You keep alluding to some terrible injustice but you never tell me exactly what. What did you do?”

“I can’t,” says Aaron.

“What did you do?”

“I can’t,” Aaron repeats, “I can’t tell you. You’ll leave again.”

“We argued,” Alexander says. “And you - reacted. You did something to me.”

“Yes.”

“Did I issue a challenge?”

Aaron is silent.

“Or did you?”

“How do you manage to be so infuriating even beyond the grave?” asks Aaron. “Isn’t it enough to know that we are here together now and that there’s nothing we can do to hurt each other anymore?”

“You issued a challenge,” Alexander says.

“I -”

“What happened?”

Aaron stays silent.

“You say there’s nothing we can do to hurt each other anymore,” says Alexander softly. “I don’t think you have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

He gets up and drifts away, and Aaron remains, holding the letter in shaking hands.

 

* * *

 

“Please don’t go anywhere,” Aaron says.

Alexander is in the bedroom. He doesn’t need to sleep - but he pretends to do it very effectively, laying silent on the bed with his eyes shut.

“Go away,” he murmurs. “I’m napping.”

“You haven’t slept a wink in years. We’ve been together nearly a decade now and I know for a fact that you haven’t spontaneously developed the need to sleep.”

“You say you dreamed of the war. You say you dreamed of gunshots. You say you slighted me and you won’t just admit what you’ve done -”

“Sulking won’t change a thing. You aren’t fourteen again, Alexander. Please do try to act like the man you are.”

Alexander sits up and loses track of himself enough that he floats a little ways above the bedspread. “Tell me what you did to me, Burr.”

“Alexander - my dearest, please -”

“No,” says Alexander. “You don’t have the right to call me that if you won’t be honest with me.”

“Alexander -”

“I shall leave, and I won’t talk to you anymore -”

Aaron feels the blood drain from his face. “No,” he says.

“I will! I don’t deserve this -”

“Alexander,” says Aaron, “if you leave me again, I’ll die. I swear to you right now that if you leave I will die.”

Silence hangs heavy between them. Alexander is the first to break it.

“Dying isn’t that bad, all things considered,” he says. “This is worse. This uncertainty. I don’t know a thing unless you tell me. I’ve lost all my connections and I’ve been trusting you to build them. Why do you tell me so little about my wife? I know I loved her, and I know I loved John, but you won’t tell me about them. You won’t tell me where they are or how they wound up. You aren’t helping me by keeping things from me. You’re my only connection to the world and you refuse to let me have my memories. Why are you being so cruel to me? I’ve done some terrible things, but are they terrible enough to warrant this?”

“You’ll leave me,” Aaron repeats. It feels like that’s all he can say.

“Yes,” says Alexander. “If you don’t tell me what you did.”

The words tumble out of Aaron’s mouth before he can stop them. “I shot you,” he says, and then the words are hanging heavy between the two of them, and Alex won’t respond.

He won’t respond.

“Please,” Aaron says. “I thought -”

“I would have had better aim than you. You’re a terrible shot. You’re lying,” says Alexander.

“You fired in the air. You threw your shot, Alexander,” Aaron tells him.

Alexander slowly gets up. There’s nothing in him, no body with which to feel pain, but nonetheless he moves like an octogenarian, all creaking bones and aching muscle. He’s slow, his movements pained.

“So it all comes back to you, then,” he says to Aaron. “My first friend, and my greatest enemy. I understand your letters now.”

“Alexander,” Aaron pleads, but there’s something changing already. Alexander has begun to pale a little, like a drizzle fading to mist fading to clear air. There’s a slow, painful disappearance; he’s less opaque by the second until all that’s left is the faint hiss of a single breath, and then nothing.

Nothing.

Aaron doesn’t weep. He simply sits on the bed, clasps his hands, bows his head, and fails to pray.

 

* * *

 

_Dear Alexander:_

_It’s worse having had you and lost you again. I would rather have lost you for good the first time._

 

* * *

 

One evening Aaron whirls to find Alexander standing behind him.

“Don’t do that,” is the first thing that falls out of his mouth.

“Do what?” Alexander asks.

“Don’t _startle_ me like that -”

“Nice to see you too,” Alexander drawls. “I can tell I’m very welcome here.”

“I thought you’d gone for good,” says Aaron.

“I intended to,” Alex says. “You keep writing those damned letters. One would think you would give up eventually, but you’re -”

“Dedicated?” Aaron suggests.

“Stubborn,” says Alexander. “Irritating.”

“I see we’re back to enemies,” says Burr.

“You _shot_ me,” Alex snaps. “What am I supposed to consider you at this point?”

“We were -”

“What, Aaron? What were we?”

Aaron reaches his hands out in supplication. “I loved you,” he says. “As I still love you. More than anyone I have ever loved. I did terrible things and I don’t expect you to forgive me. But please, don’t leave again.”

“Stop writing letters,” Alexander tells him.

Aaron puts his face in his hands. “I can’t lose you again.”

“You should have thought of that before you decided to kill me,” says Alexander.

The words hang heavy in the air between them. Aaron scarcely dares to breathe. He can’t seem to gather the words in his mind to respond. Alexander has always been far more expressive than him, far more talented at plucking the perfect words from thin air and spinning them into something dazzling. Alexander builds bridges with words dark and rich like raw honey. Alexander would know how to mend this.

Alexander must know how to mend this, but he clearly doesn’t want to.

“You don’t have to forgive me,” Aaron says, and then he stops. His tongue works in his mouth as he desperately hunts for the words that will make Alexander stay. “I don’t expect you to ever forgive me. There’s nothing I can do to atone for what I’ve done. But -” And here he pauses again. The words are so sparse, so inadequate.

But Alexander, bless him, gives him the space. Lets him fumble for these inadequate utterances. He is gracious. Aaron almost hates his mercy.

“But please,” he says, “don’t go. I’ll do whatever you ask.”

“How am I supposed to reconcile this in my mind?” Alexander asks him. “You murdered me and you expect me to stay with you?”

“I’m sorry,” says Aaron.

Alexander huffs. “That’s what I wanted to hear, you ass. You spend so much time talking in circles and only just now do you actually apologize. Of course I’ll stay. Someone needs to make you feel guilty for murdering me.”

Aaron laughs and then bursts into furious tears. “You’re staying,” he says, his voice thick with emotion and disbelief.

“Of course,” says Alexander. “Wasn’t it obvious?”

 

* * *

 

Aaron drops his quill.

Strange.

He goes to flex his fingers and realizes that can’t feel his fingers. They move alright - not amazingly well, but well enough - but he can’t feel them. Nor can he feel, he realizes as he moves, the rest of his arm. His right foot is tingling a little.

“Alex,” he calls. His voice feels heavy and sluggish.

Alexander is there, kneeling in front of him, taking his hands. Hand. Hands. Aaron can feel his left hand but not his right. He can see the quill toppling from his lap to the floor. Alexander is speaking but the words don’t reach his ears properly; they’re all there, but he fixates on one and by the time he can figure out the meaning of the one, four others have passed. They won’t string together right.

“Talk slower,” he says.

“What?” says Alex, and then there are more words, and he can only pick out three: “I can’t understand you.”

“Talk slower -”

Alex stands and wraps around him. He’s still talking, but the only thing Aaron can process is the kiss Alex places on the top of his head, gently, as though he might shatter if touched too hard.

“I’m sorry,” Alexander says. Aaron has just enough time to wonder, _for what?_ before something shifts and he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

It’s harder to write nowadays. The feeling never fully returned in his hand, and when the second stroke hit it took most of the sensation in the rest of his arm. Aaron manages by using his left hand to bend the fingers of his right around the quill, and then by shifting his shoulder as well as his forearm. It isn’t perfect and his writing is nearly illegible but it’s fine.

Alex is harder to understand, and whether that’s the aftereffects of the stroke or the terrible penmanship in his letters, Aaron doesn’t know. It isn’t exactly something one can ask, either. One can hardly walk into a university and ask a professor, _sir, my ghost lover suddenly can’t speak as well as he used to. Is this because of the blockage in the arteries of my brain affecting the sensation in my arm and therefore my penmanship, or is it because of the blockage affecting my ability to understand people?_

Because he knows that’s happening, too. He struggles to understand the woman he’s hired to act partly as his nurse and partly as his housekeeper; Mrs. Jumel knows to talk slow around poor old Mr. Burr, the feeble invalid who talks to himself when no one is nearby. Poor old Mr. Burr with his imaginary friend Alexander. He sees the way she looks at him when she catches him chatting to Alexander.

But the worst is over, he thinks. Two strokes and he still has the ability to write? He can still keep his lover nearby. There are worse ways to live out his last few years.

“I’d die without you,” he says to Alexander one night as they lay side by side on Aaron’s bed. His feet are cold but it’s too difficult for him to get up and fetch another blanket or put more wood on the fire. He contemplates asking Mrs. Jumel to come from her own room and do it for him, but she’s crotchety when she’s woken up. He can’t blame her. He’s the same way.

“You’ll die regardless,” says Alexander. “But I’ll be with you to bring you home. We’ll go together. Nothing to be scared of.”

Alex has been talking like this a lot lately. Aaron can feel himself getting weaker, and he knows why Alexander is doing this - but it irritates him more than it comforts him. Why does he need a reminder that he’ll be dying soon? What septuagenarian forgets they’re at the tail end of their life?

“Hush,” he says. “Kiss me goodnight.”

Alexander, dear Alexander, who still looks just as he did at forty-seven, rolls and presses a soft kiss to Aaron’s bottom lip. It still doesn’t feel like a kiss from a living man but it’s close enough that Aaron doesn’t really mind the difference all that much.

“Goodnight, dear,” says Alexander. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

 

* * *

 

The third stroke must have come in the night. When he awakens, Alexander is in tears and he can no longer move his right arm at all.

“I’ll use my left, then,” he says. His speech is thick. “Dearest, don’t cry like that. Hand me my quill.”

It’s a struggle, but he manages to scrawl _Dear Alexander; Today I woke up to see you crying …_

 

* * *

 

Aaron can no longer walk. He relies on Mrs. Jumel to handle everything - she feeds him, bathes him, clothes him, attends to his voiding. He feels deep shame at how little he can do for himself now, and at the knowledge that Alexander can see all of this and can’t help.

“I wouldn’t want you to, anyway,” he says. “I wouldn’t want you to have to be my nursemaid.”

“I would, and gladly,” says Alex.

The letters are difficult and exhausting work. He can write very little with his numb, nearly immobile left hand. Some days he can’t write at all, and Alexander stays, but on those days when no letters are produced, he seems a little hazier, a little less solid. One morning, Aaron tries dictating a letter to Mrs. Jumel, only to find she can read just a little and write not at all.

“But you never send them, anyway,” she says. “I’m sure you can stop writing so much. Give your poor hands a rest, love.”

He just thanks her. How could he possibly explain?

Aaron frets all the time about having another stroke. He often sits and stares into the fire and contemplates the sensation of having a stroke, the numbness, the tingling, the absence of understanding. He thinks back to his first and how he’d lamented the loss of motion in his arm. What he wouldn’t give to be able to go back to having only had a single stroke! What he wouldn’t give to have only a _little_ difficulty writing to Alexander!

“This isn’t fair,” he says to Alexander one morning.

“You’ve already had thirty years more than I had, dearest,” says Alexander gently. “Nothing is ever fair.”

 

* * *

 

Aaron turns eighty. And it’s strange, very strange, that he spends so much time thinking about the sensation of a stroke and he doesn’t even see the fourth one coming.

He loses all feeling in his hands.

Alexander holds on bravely for two days. By the third day, he’s losing substance, becoming translucent, and Aaron bursts into furious tears seeing how thin and ethereal he’s become.

“Don’t go,” he pleads, his tongue a heavy dead weight in his mouth. “Please don’t leave me. I don’t have much longer - two more days, perhaps. I can feel it. Don’t leave me, Alexander, please!”

“My love,” Alexander whispers. “I’ll hold on as long as I possibly can.”

But the next morning, Aaron awakens alone. There’s no one in the bed beside him, not even a single green wisp where Alexander was the night before.

There’s the barest hint of a voice - _Aaron, I held on as long as I could, I don’t want to go -_

“I’m frightened,” Aaron murmurs.

_I know, love. Be strong for me._

“I can’t be without you -”

_You’ve been without me before. Be strong, and I’ll see you on the other side._

“Alexander, I love you, please don’t leave me.”

Silence. The voice is gone. “Alexander,” Aaron calls, and then louder - “Alexander! Alexander, please!”

He doesn’t realize he’s screaming until Mrs. Jumel bursts into the room and says, “Mr. Burr, please, take a breath - you’ll wake the whole neighbourhood -”

“He’s gone, he’s gone,” Aaron moans.

“Who, sir?”

“Alexander -”

Something in Mrs. Jumel’s face changes. “He’s gone nowhere,” she says. “He’s been with you this whole time, hasn’t he?”

“You don’t understand,” says Aaron.

“The people we love don’t ever really leave us. Let’s get you ready for breakfast,” she says. Her hand is cool when she puts it on his forehead to rub away the tension.

“No breakfast. I’m going to die today,” he says.

“I’ll bring you some tea, then. Have that at least. For me,” she says.

Aaron grunts and turns his head away. But when she brings the tea, he drinks it - if only so he has the energy to mourn properly.

 

* * *

 

He feels the fading. There’s so little air in his lungs, so little blood in his veins.

“God, let me die, let me die,” he pleads. “Lord, if You have any mercy, bring me my end. Let me see him one more time.”

It occurs to him that perhaps God isn’t listening, that if God had cared He would have given Aaron his lover, his best friend, with whom to live out the last agonizing days.

“Bring me my end,” Aaron prays. He scarcely speaks except to ask God for death. “Bring me peace.”

And when it finally comes, two days later, it sneaks up on him. The numbness in his fingers and toes turns to light; the light curls around his nerves and climbs to his spine. The vines wrap around his spine and shoot into his mind and then the light, white-hot and agonizingly beautiful, is pulsing through his eyes, and the last thing he says is, “Alexander!” and then the world disappears.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everything is soft blue. Alexander moves towards him, resplendent in his military coat, a sword hanging by his side. Aaron can feel strength in his limbs. He’s standing on his feet, not leaning on anything. He feels strong. He feels alive.

“Welcome home,” Alexander says.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos keep my ghost boyfriend from disappearing. chat to me at [alexangery.tumblr.com](http://alexangery.tumblr.com)


End file.
